Come on then. I’m looking to move to ADSL (no, not cable, so don’t even recommend it) and want some suggestions for ISPs. All I’ve been suggested so far is Zen. Any more for any more? Leave a comment, or something.

Back from the frozen north, recharged and happy, with piles of photos, new stories to write, new music to play, new places embedded in my geographic memory. And I return to find that the mighty Bill Bailey has a weblog. Yikes.

I think this is the first concerted period of me being at home for a very long while. I’m mainly going to be around, sorting stuff out – my life, my affairs, and the fact I want broadband here. And so I’ll probably be posting here more again.

You know, I think I say this all the fricking time.

OK. So I think I’ve sussed why people get quite such fits of Applelust – you know, demanding to replace their last-six-months-model with the next one. And have realised that the rampant desire for upgrade – lust, even – isn’t just down to the shiny goodness of the products.

No.

It’s down to the branding strategy. When, say, the Powerbook is upgraded, it is not replaced by a product with a new model name, but with another Powerbook. Essentially: what you own has been made obsolete. There is a new Powerbook.

Back in the day, upgrading a Powermac 7600 to a 7800 (or whatever) isn’t so big a leap because it’s clearly a different model. Yours still exists in the Mac consumer space. But when your Powerbook or iMac no longer exists – ie, the word Powerbook or iMac no longer actually means what you have on your desk, you develop a feeling of exclusion. And so need another.

And that’s the trick. Everything is advertised as ‘the new X‘. Not another one. A new one. And again, it’s pretty much something that the iMac kicked off, the simplification of branding, which actually leads to an increase in turnover of goods. After all, they’re trying to sell the concept of iMac, the concept of Powerbook, the concept of Apple to you. And surely there’s no better way to prove that the concept has been sold than to have got your buyers so entrenched in concept that they feel the need to constantly replace their superceded model not just out of the desire to upgrade, but simply out of brand and product loyalty?

As of tomorrow, I can learn to drive Heavy Goods Vehicles in the UK. I can drink in the United States. And I can have anal sex in Germany.

Tomorrow, the 19th September, I am 21. Which is nice. Sadly, I’m up in London doing work experience and there aren’t many people around to celebrate with, though I’m trying to vainly arrange something at the weekend. My birthday’s always been awkward – at school, it was just after term began and there wasn’t quite time to do anything. At university, it was just before term began and my friends were still scattered around the country. This year I thought I might actually be able to sort something… but I picked up a work experience gig and thus am in the city. So I’m hoping that when I’m 22 I might be free to celebrate it with all the people I want to, rather than having to smear my birthday over several dates like it was rationed. Still, it does mean several opportunities to have fun, and in the end, it is only an arbitrary date on which I decided to come into existence. I’m all for unbirthdays. Like Eeyore.

Finally, tomorrow is also International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Arrrrr!

So I’m standing on the Canary Wharf escalator, the final one, that takes you to ground level, and I so far haven’t been convinced by the busker at the bottom, who’s just playing live guitar solos over backing cds, nicely controlled and all, but not exactly stunning. And then, that skyscraper just to your right emerges out of nowhere, and he melts into a wonderfully gooey solo on Hey Joe, and the sun glints off the skyscraper, and suddenly I grin on the inside and then on the outside, because that was a kind-of pretty damn good moment for a morning commute.

He wasn’t really that bad a guitarist, anyhow.

The way we use computers is changing, and right now it’s changing in more exciting ways than at any time in my life, really. Right now, I’m sitting in a living room, listening to the second Bent album, writing on my Powerbook which is wired over my shoulder into cable broadband. If I was at home, it could be wireless. I have this single window containing Moveable Type and everything else has been shunted out the way, into a dock at the left or into menulets. Tabbed windows; I mean, hell, if I’d had that five years ago when is sixteen…

Thing is, there’s such an established base of software out there we get used to doing things in a way, even if it’s a stupid way. Would you go back from tabs? So why won’t Microsoft pick up on it? GUIs impose a fixed interpretation of UI on users with little room for manoeuvre – and when they do manouevre, it’s often handled so lazily that you wish for something normal. Change has to be handled very carefully.

The move at the moment, especially if like me, you’re a user of OSX, is into little individual, simple programs that do little, individual tasks – take a look at Konfabulator for this taken to its logical shiny conclusion.

Blah, blah, everyone’s said this better than me before. It just all came out again when I noticed Matt Webb describing some ideas and his working process for what’s essentially a non-verbal IM client: Glancing. I can’t wait to see the finished or beta version. It’s a really… exciting use of very simple technology. The desktop metaphor is being extended further into an office metaphor, and it’s clearly a very awkward metaphor to get just right. Which is something Matt’s clearly realised is quite important for Glancing to succeed. Metaphor fails, software fails. It’ll be interesting to see how it develops. Also, if you’re interested in this kind of thing, Matt’s notes make for interesting reading (and they’re also further clues in that elusive puzzle of anyone trying to work out how the hell his brain works.

OK, so I pointed out in the last post that I’m now “back” as it were, both in this country, and on the net, etc. But there’s a bit of change afoot; for the next month, I’ll be doing work experience in London, which should be excellent – a whole month in the same department, to get to know the people there and acheive some consistency in what I’m doing. I’m also looking forward to city life, and being near to the art, films, and theatre that excites me so much. And also the people I know there, the friends, and the acquaintances. And finally, it’s a chance to see if I can actually cope with living in the city, which is where I want to settle for a while. A trial run, if you like. Looking forward to it immensely.

(And in between the stop and the start – a week of rest and recharge, with some gloriously silly films (T3, Pirates of the Carribean), and incredible dinner courtesy of The Rowans, and delightful, loving company. Which was just what I needed, even if it was a little brief).

I’m back in the land of the digital, it would seem. Two weeks were pleasantly passed on Levkas, in Nidri, sailing, eating, drinking, and generally having a lot of fun and a well earned holiday. My sailing improved a fair bit (and I discovered that I’m really not too shabby at it), and a great deal was consumed, including:

• Filmwise: On the flight out, What A Girl Wants. I watched this without the soundtrack and thus concocted a fantastic plot about Colin Firth’s desire to bed his recently returned American daughter, but somehow I get the feeling this wasn’t what was really going on. What was going on was pretty shit, though. Hideous chocolate-box portrayal of London, bastardisation of the British political system, and general wish fulfilment for twelve-year-old girls, or something. Pretty crap; its portrayal of Henley was surprisingly non-ridiculous, but that’s only because the reality of Henley is so ridiculous anyway…

  On the return, I got the godawful Agent Cody Banks, which I had the misfortune to watch with the soundtrack. Redeeming features: the greatest iPod ever, which not only holds 20gb of music, but also contains a winch that can take a small person’s body weight, and an electronic lock pick. And the fact that everyone at the CIA headquarters travelled around on Segways, which makes for some pretty hilarious scenes. Everything else was execrable. Ian “Lovejoy” McShane trying to take over the world by putting nanomachines into the world’s ice cube supply? Give me a break. And slightly more budget. I swear, CGI has allowed more people to make shitty films with pseudo-expensive specialy effects than ever before.

• Bookwise: Iain Banks’ Dead Air, which all told, was pretty appalling. Immediately dislikable central character, irrelevant plot, irksome yammering of central character about issues, and very little else to recommend it. September 11th is just really a framing device for the book, not what it’s about, contrary to what the press for it suggested. I also read James Joyce’s Dubliners, which is far far far better, and has some genuinely stunningshort stories in it (though it must be said, not all of them hit the mark).
• Soundwise: Not a lot new, really. CDs of funky and mellow house to keep me going in the 100F+ temperatures of northern Greece, and the most recent albums of Dizzee Rascal, London Elektricity, and Four Tet. Have just picked up Hed Kandi’s most recent Winter Chill CD along with Jacko’s Off The Wall and Thriller, in yet another HMV sale. It’s going to take me a while to warm to Thriller, I think, but Off the Wall is just mighty.
• Lots of Greek food. What I sampled of Greek cuisine is just wonderful. Essential, it seems to fuse the freshest, crispest, most beautifully marinated salads with, well, barbeque. Saganaki is just deep-fried feta, but it may as well be the Greek for “good” because it’s so damn nice, and the saganaki mushrooms I had were amazing. Souvlaki is the kebab we know and love; gyros is something more approaching doner but made with real offcuts, not synthetic offal, and is thus super-tasty. And then there’s the beautiful fresh fish and stuff. It’s just all yummy. And fresh. And brilliant. The food was one of the greatest parts of my holiday, I’d guess.

And there we are. I’m back, and shall now do my best to weblog properly or something. Like I always say…

So, I’m nicely asleep in my hotel bed this morning, having gone back to sleep successfully for the first time all week, when I get woken up, and everything’s shaking. I mean, dude, everything is really shaking. So the three of us hold on to our beds, watch glasses of water spill and lights jiggle, and listen to the sound of smashing.

And a minute later it’s all over and we wander outside the hotel. I’m in Nidri, on the island of Levkas. Forty minutes up the road, Levkas town sits on the epicentre of a 6.4 on the Richter scale earthquake.

Which was all slightly unexpected, but passed off OK. And then the wiund picked up and I bombed around the bay a little. Every now and then, there’s a hint of aftershock. Badum. Badum.

(I am on holiday and it is bloody awesome, but I thought this was worth blogging).

I finished at work today. Every summer for the past five years I’ve done the same job, working as a temporary member of the IT support team at the school where my mum teaches. It’s been a way of making a moderate amount of money, in relaxed surroundings with people I like, and I’ve made many friends through it. Despite the heat, despite the slog of transporting 17″ monitors, it’s always been worthwhile. Today, I departed, knowing that with any luck I wouldn’t need to take up a post next summer, because I’d hopefully have a “proper job”. Five summers. In the second summer I picked up my A-Level results; three years later, I’ve finished the degree they secured me. How time flies.

Time has flown every which way really, and I’ve failed to organise any for blogging. I’ve watched a lot of ER and Six Feet Under since I last posted, and the entirety of Paul Abbott’s magnificent State of Play, which I should probably write on more in the future. If you saw it a couple of months back, you’ll know what I mean. Anyhow, I’m now going off-grid for a deserved break. Will be back soon, though, and will probably finally get around to the final touches to this site and that whole “regular posting” malarky. I said probably.